


Like a Damn Fool

by Shippershape



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: But what can I say, F/M, Yeah I know there have only been two episodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shippershape/pseuds/Shippershape
Summary: “Do you wish I’d never been called up?”Mike freezes, gaping at her, all notions of seduction and terrible, impulsive decisions disappearing from his head.“What?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic for this pairing, hope you like it. I'm loving Pitch so far!

Mike doesn’t know how it got to be just the two of them.

Half the team had been there when they first arrived. There are still holdouts, guys who refuse to go anywhere but the diamond itself if Ginny is going to be around. Even among the rest of the team, she probably won’t be winning any popularity contests anytime soon, but-

They’re coming around. Slowly. No more brawls in the locker room, no more trash talk about the pitcher when she’s barely a door away, so. Progress.

But now he’s sitting at the table with her, the rest of the bar patrons slowly thinning out, their teammates having disappeared in a constant trickle until only two were left. Just them. He glances over at Ginny now, the way she’s holding the neck of her beer so loosely between her fingers, so small but strong. Her gaze floats back over to him from where she was watching some late night show on the tv mounted in the corner, and her brow furrows.

“What?”

He didn’t realize he was staring.

“Nothing.” He shrugs, eyes dropping to his own beer, clutching it with both hands.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He looks back up, wary. They’ve both had a lot to drink, enough that he’s caught himself lingering on the way her lips fit around the mouth of a bottle, the dimples that appear when someone’s lucky enough to make her smile, the curve of her neck. And she’s squinting at him now, as though sizing him up, and that makes him a little nervous. He clears his throat.

“Shoot.”

“Do you wish I’d never been called up?”

Mike freezes, gaping at her, all notions of seduction and terrible, _impulsive_ decisions disappearing from his head.

“What?”

She cocks her head, all thought and lazy observation, and he marvels at the way a 23-year-old rookie can make him feel so damn _vulnerable_. He wonders if a rookie of the male persuasion could do it, wonders if one would ever even _try_.

“Don’t ‘what’ me.” Her tongue darts out, wetting her lips. “I know all the other guys do, they resent me for ruining the dynamic, for getting Al fired, for all the losses, even the ones that weren’t my fault.”

None of them were her fault. They’re a team, they win and lose as one. But she _would_ blame herself, he realizes. She continues.

“And I can’t really deny that I come with a lot of drama, it’s not _mine_ , you know, but it follows me around, so I’m just wondering…” She trails off, lost, for a moment, in her head. “Do you-do you still feel that way?”

She’s implying, no, assuming, that he ever has. And though there have been moments, tired and dragging moments when he finds himself at the epicenter of that hurricane of drama she does indeed seem permanently tangled with, he can’t really say the thought has crossed his mind with any real conviction.

“No.” He says baldly, eyes locking onto hers. “I don’t wish you’d never been called up. Don’t get me wrong-” he interjects, when something in her face changes. “-you’re a huge pain in my ass. But I guess…” his lips tug up in a wry smile. “I’m just too curious to see how this all turns out.”

Her own lips twitch even as she rolls her eyes, leaning back in her chair.

After a while, she says quietly-

“I’m just here to play baseball.”

He’s heard her say it before, thinks it’s something she’s had to say a lot since being called up, and probably before that, but there’s something about the slump in her shoulders now that has a long-forgotten part of his chest constricting.

“And you’re doing a perfectly mediocre job at it,” he says with a patronizing grin, laughing when she throws a peanut shell at him. It hits him in the nose, right on target, he’s sure, and her dimples flash back at him from across the table. His phone buzzes on the edge of the table, a text from Amelia, and then his eyes fall on the time flashing on the screen.

“Fuck,” he says, dragging a hand across his face. “It’s after two.”

Ginny just shrugs, unconcerned.

“Time for bed, grandpa?”

He chokes on his beer, glaring at her.

“I am your _captain_ ,” he mutters, “I think that demands at least a little goddamn respect-” and then he sees her gaze drop from his face to his still lit up phone, just for a second, before she looks away.

Shit.

But if she saw the text, who it was from, nothing comes of it. She throws back the dregs of her beer, chair scraping against the floor as she pushes it away from the table.

“Alright.” Her hand comes down on the back of his chair, and he’s confused for a moment until she pulls it back, along with a jacket he doesn’t remember. Has that been there all night? “I guess that’s a night, then.”

He doesn’t want it to end, he realizes, then hates himself for it. He’s a veteran on this team, the captain. He should know better than to develop a crush on his rookie, but-

Even now he can’t help but be drawn to her, watching as she tugs the hoodie on over her arms, zipping it up in the front, over her chest. He likes her, just likes being _near_ her, and it’s suicide, masochistic and stupid. Nothing could ever come of it. His career isn’t the only one on the line.

Besides, she’s young and gorgeous and full of life, and he’s-

Well, he’s not. The admiration on her face the first time they met has long faded, hero-worship replaced by grudging respect, _maybe_ friendship. He’s not so stupid a bastard as to assume she’d ever actually be interested in starting something with him. Mike Lawson, the womanizer, the player on the front page.

After a few seconds of wallowing in the self-pity that seems to be ever-encroaching these days, he hears his name. Blinking, he looks up to see Ginny frowning at him again.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said are you coming?”

He shakes off the remaining wisps of melancholy, grabbing his own jacket from its spot on the table and sliding to his feet. The world tilts a little, a reminder of the very long night of drinking behind them, and somewhere to his right, a woman giggles.

“Are you laughing at me, Baker?” He grunts, steadying himself on the wall. An arm loops through his elbow, and he looks over to see her shaking her head and smiling.

“At my captain? I would never.” But even those words are laced with mirth.

“Yeah, yeah.”

She steers him through the bar, outside, and pulls out her own phone.

“Let’s get you cab.”

“How did I get so drunk?” He wonders, watching a homeless man peddle past on a bike laden with garbage bags.

“Shots,” Ginny replies, phone to her ear. “You kept doing shots with Blip.”

She’s right. He remembers that, remembers how she did three rounds with them then bowed out in favor of something a little less potent, remembers how some of the guys gave her shit for it, the mean kind laced with implications about her gender. But she’d ignored them. He wonders how she learned to let so much slide off her back, when she’d first had to grow that thick skin. Younger than she should have, he guesses. He closes his eyes and lets her voice wash over him as she calls him a cab, lets the cool night air meet the radiating heat of his face.

“You’re a good pitcher,” he says hoarsely, in the quiet that settles a few minutes later. She glances at him, confused. “It would be a damn shame if you let the circus scare you off.”

Her answering smile is quick, almost sharp in it’s sadness.

“Thanks, Mike.”

His cab pulls up a few minutes later, and Ginny piles him in, patting him fondly on the head as she slides in next to him.

“You coming home with me?” He asks, then curses his loose tongue. She snorts.

“Yeah, because I’ve totally lost my mind. We’re sharing a cab, Fabio.” As she leans forward to give the driver his address, because it’s closer, he stares at the strip of skin that appears where her shirt rides up. It looks soft, and inviting, and he wedges his hand between the seat and the door in order to keep himself from reaching out to brush his fingers there.

It doesn’t take long for the quiet of the car, and the warmth of the body beside him to lull him off to sleep, the passing streetlamps fading into darkness.

.-.-.-.-.-.

He wakes up the next morning to a splitting headache, burying his face in the pillow as he sorts through the fragments of last night for anything important. He remembers the cab, but not leaving it. No way Ginny was strong enough to carry him, so he must have at least woken up long enough to crawl inside. As he rolls over to check the time, he sees the bottle of Gatorade sitting on his nightstand. Blue, his favorite. And beside it, two familiar red pills. He sits up, throwing back the ibuprofen and taking a generous swig of the sport drink, wincing when the room spins. His phone tells him it’s about quarter past ten, and he has a handful of text messages, most notably one from Amelia and two from Ginny. He pulls up the latter, smiling when he reads it.

_Up and at ‘em Gramps_

Followed by-

_I’m picking you up at 10:30 and dragging your sorry ass to the gym_

He’s hungover, and he’s got less than ten minutes to get himself dressed and vertical, but he doesn’t feel so bad, suddenly.

“I’m too old for this shit,” he mutters, getting to his feet with a painful groan. But when he catches his reflection in the mirror, it’s not a scowl that greets him. He’s grinning like a damn fool, ear to ear, and it takes a few seconds of actively trying to wipe it away. He _is_ too old for this shit, but…there’s a dangerous, quickly growing part of him that really doesn’t care anymore.

And when the knock comes on his door, accompanied by a ‘ _come on Lawson, DiCaprio’s waiting’_ , that grin cracks wide open again. Yeah, he’s in trouble.

But at least it’s going to be _fun_.


End file.
